The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.

JANUARY 5–17 (18–30), 1912

Draft Resolution on the Tasks of the Party in the
Present Situation

ThisConference endorses, first and foremost, the resolution adopted at the
Party Conference in December 1908 on “The Tasks of the Party in the
Present Situation”. This Conference points to the extreme importance of
that resolution, whose provisions relating to the historical meaning and class
essence of the entire June Third regime on the one hand, and the growing
revolutionary crisis on the other, have been fully confirmed by the events of
the past three years.

Ofthese events the Conference particularly notes the following:

(a)The agrarian policy of tsarism, with which both the government parties of
the landowners and big bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary liberals have
bound up their counter-revolutionary interests, has not led to the creation of
anything like stable bourgeois relations in the village, nor has it relieved the
peasantry of mass hunger, which reflects the extreme worsening of the condition
of the population and an enormous loss of productive forces.

(b)In view of its impotence in the face of the world competition of the modern
capitalist states and being pushed more and more into the background in Europe,
the tsarist autocracy in alliance with the reactionary nobility and the growing
industrial bourgeoisie, is now endeavouring to satisfy its predatory interests
by means of crude “nationalist” politics, directed against the more
cultured regions (Finland, Poland, North-Western Area), and, through colonial
conquest, against the peoples of Asia (Persia and Mongolia)who are waging a revolutionary struggle for freedom.

(c)The developing economic advance is largely offset by the complete
disruption of peasant economy, by the rapacious budgetary policy of the
autocracy and the absolute corruption in the bureaucratic apparatus; on the
other hand, the increasing cost of living intensifies the poverty of the
working class and the broad masses of the population.

(d)In view of this the broad masses of the population have become
convinced, during the five-year existence of the Third Duma, that it is
unwilling, unable, and powerless to do anything to improve their
conditions, and that the parties predominating in the Duma are anti-popular
in character.

(e)The onset of a political revival is to be noted among broad
democratic circles, chiefly among the proletariat. The workers’ strikes of
1910–11, the beginning of demonstrations and proletarian meetings, the
start of a movement among urban bourgeois democrats (the student strikes),
etc., all these are signs of the growing revolutionary feelings of the
masses against the June, Third regime.

ThisConference, proceeding from all these facts, confirms the tasks
confronting the Party as outlined in detail in the resolution of the
December 1908 Conference, and draws the particular attention of comrades
to:

(1)Thefact that, as heretofore, the first task on the order of the
day is the continued work of the socialist education, organisation, and
unification of the politically-conscious masses of the proletariat;

(2)Thenecessity for intensive work to re-establish the illegal
organisation of the R.S.D.L.P., which more than ever before takes advantage
of all and every legal possibility, which is capable of leading the
economic struggles of the proletariat, and which is the only party able to
take the lead in political actions by the proletariat that are growing more
frequent;

(3)Thenecessity to organise and extend systematic political agitation
and to give wholehearted support to the incipient mass movement and secure
its development under the banner of full implementation of the Party
slogans.

Propagandafor a republic, and against the policy of the tsarist
monarchy, must be given special prominence to counteract, among other
things, the widespread propaganda in favour of curtailed slogans and
adaptation to existing “legality”.